


Savior

by pluto



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Dark, F/M, dark_fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-14
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluto/pseuds/pluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harold Saxon takes an unusual interest in Martha Jones' life, everything changes.  AU, dark fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At First Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for character death (supporting characters)! Hearty thank yous are due to persiflage_1 for Brit-picking a complete stranger's story and being warm and cheerful to boot; to tsubaki_ny, darthneko, emilytarot and armistice_day for cheerleading at all stages; and most absolutely and especially to the fantastic Mr. foxysquid, who held my hand every step of the way, listened to me bitch and moan and gnash my teeth, and pre-read/provided much insight on the story in many of its ugliest phases. Any remaining errors are my own!
> 
> Written for dark_fest, prompt: Doctor Who: Master/Martha. The Master lays a trap for the Doctor using Martha before they ever met.

Martha's eyes skimmed over the chart in her hands without really seeing it. She was preoccupied by the presence of Doctor Stoker hovering behind her, watching her every move. (That was her defense, later, when Julia Swales teased her about missing the significance of the man she was treating.)

Trying to display her best bedside manner, Martha made light conversation as she assessed the patient's injury.

"How are you today?"

The patient smiled at her, all teeth and crinkled eyes. "Oh, let's just say... brilliant."

"And how did you injure your head, Mr.--" she glanced again at the chart--"Saxon?"

"Travelling. I like to fly here and there, now and then." His smile widened, verging on lecherous. "Turned out to be a bit of a _bumpy_ ride, if you know what I mean, doctor."

Martha was used ignoring to the occasional suggestive remark from a patient, but there was something about Mr. Saxon's tone of voice that made her glance at his face. He was watching her keenly. She might have been a little unnerved, if she hadn't been so annoyed by the frankness of his gaze.

"Well, you haven't done too much damage," she told him brusquely, "A couple of stitches and you'll be good as new."

"A couple of stitches and a kiss will make anything better, I'd say." Mr. Saxon gave her a sharkish grin, daring her, she thought, to come back at him.

Gritting her teeth, Martha looked over her shoulder at Stoker for some support, only to find him staring past her through the window, daydreaming. His fingers twitched absently at his side.

She shook her head, sighing, and proceeded to disinfect, stitch and bandage Mr. Saxon with a speed and efficiency that Dr. Stoker praised her for later. She only wanted to get away from Mr. Saxon's leer and stare. She might have told him off, if they had been alone, or if she'd thought Dr. Stoker would back her up. As it was, she kept quiet and worked faster.

She gave Saxon a tight smile when she was done. "You're all set, Mr. Saxon. You'll need to follow up with your GP in a week to have those removed." She stripped off her gloves so quickly they snapped back at her and tossed them in the trash.

"But you haven't kissed it better." Mr. Saxon leaned forward, dark eyes glittering.

Martha's forced smile became even more strained. "Have a good day, Mr. Saxon."

"I'm waiting..."

Martha turned sharply on her heel and left the examining room, not bothering to wait for Dr. Stoker.

It was only when Julia caught her arm in the hallway and whispered, "Did you really treat Mr. Archangel himself?" that her mind made the connection: Mr. Saxon the obnoxious patient to Harold Saxon the entrepreneur-author-rising-star.

"Oh god," she exclaimed. "That was him? That was him."

"What was he like?" Julia's fingers squeezed her arm.

Martha wrinkled her nose. "Bit of a pig, actually. And he's got a sort of a weaselly face, hasn't he?"

"Martha Jones!" Julia gasped, but she giggled while she said it. "You're going to wake up and your mobile's going to be dead."

"The horror!" Martha laughed, and proceeded to put Harold Saxon out of her mind.


	2. Hush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Supporting character death in this chapter.

Martha had always been too busy to pay the so-called ghost shifts much mind. Her priority was the living, and she was fortunate enough and young enough that no one close to her had died. She never hesitated to walk straight through one of the shadowy specters if it stood between herself and a patient in need.

And then the ghosts had revealed their true shapes. They had marched through the wards, metal men, the Cybermen, taking the ill and injured, killing anyone who fought back.

Martha and Julia managed to hide a handful of patients in one of the older MRI rooms. It wasn't enough, but at least it was something.

"I always hated those things, those ghosts," Julia whispered at Martha as they crouched behind the curtain separating off a treatment area. "Gave me the creeps."

Martha was treating an ugly gash on a patient's leg. She pressed a pad of gauze against the wound.

Julia said, "Wasn't right, that, dead people coming back."

"Well, they weren't really dead people, now, were they?" Martha mopped the sweat on her brow with the back of her hand. She indicated a roll of medical tape. "Hand me that, will you?"

Metal footsteps rang out from the direction of the hallway. They were two rooms away from the main hall, and the sound still thundered through the doors. Julia dropped the medical tape and her fingers dug into Martha's arm. "Oh my god," Julia cried. "What if they find us?"

"Shh!" Martha pressed a finger to her lips.

The marching went by without pause. Martha let out a deep breath when she could no longer hear the clanging, ringing footsteps. She had to hope that it was more than luck that was keeping the Cybermen from coming into the MRI lab; they had passed by it numerous times throughout the afternoon, never turning inside.

She turned her attention back to the man she was treating. "You'll be fine," she told him, patting his knee. "Just a little cut." She looked at the group of people huddled against the back of the room. "Anyone else need assistance?"

One wide-eyed girl raised a bloodied hand, and showed her bruised, swollen arm. Martha smiled at her, trying to look reassuring. She touched Julia's shoulder.

"This is Miss Swales. She'll get you all taken care of, all right?"

Martha stood.

"Where are you going?" Julia asked.

"There's others out there. I saw them."

"You're going to lead those things right back here!"

"I won't," Martha insisted.

"Martha, don't. You'll get killed. Please." Julia reached after Martha as she moved for the door.

Martha didn't stop. She had to do what she could, or go mad.

Making her way carefully to the main hall of the radiology wing, she searched for anyone who might be still alive, still in hiding. She opened doors and looked into rooms, working her way down the hall. There were so many dead, and so many more missing from their beds.

Martha was nearly to the A&amp;E waiting area when she heard the distant march of metal feet and ducked into an examining room. She pressed her back against the wall, tense, trying to breathe as quietly as possible.

A shout rang down the hall. "Help! Please, can somebody help?"

Martha felt her stomach drop. The voice was impossibly familiar.

"It can't be," she breathed.

The progress of the footsteps paused. Listening, she thought, even as she was.

"Somebody help us! Please! Is anybody here?"

A second voice, also familiar: "We need a doctor!"

"No," she whispered. "There's no way. It can't be."

The march of feet resumed, this time towards the voices.

Martha clenched her eyes shut, fisted her hands at her sides. "You're going to get yourself killed," she whispered, and then she answered herself: "I don't care!"

Martha stepped into the hallway, cursed, and launched into a blind run.

As she emerged into the wide-open space of the A&amp;E waiting area, her worst fears were confirmed. Huddled near the automatic doors of the entrance were her brother Leo and sister Tish. Between them was her mother, unconscious. Martha refused to think otherwise as she ran towards them. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two Cybermen marching down the far hallway that led to surgery, moving steadily towards the waiting room.

"Oh my god, it's Martha! Thank god." Tish's eye makeup had run down her cheeks in twin black streaks. "Martha, help us!"

"Tish, Leo!" Martha stared at them, wild-eyed. "What are you doing here? It isn't safe!"

"It's the hospital, isn't it?" Leo said. "Mum needs a doctor!"

Martha glanced towards surgery. The Cybermen were nearly to the end of the hall.

"One of those things grabbed on to her," Leo said. "On to mum."

Martha grabbed Tish's arm. "Come on, we've got to get moving!" Martha gestured the way she'd come. "We can hide-"

Leo nodded. "Tish, get going! I've got mum." He scooped up their mother and started running. He passed Martha, shouldering his way past the separator doors down towards radiology.

As the doors swung after him, Martha gasped.

"No!" she shouted. "Leo!"

In silence of the dead hospital, Martha heard the squeak of the swinging doors and then the crackle of electricity.

Leo never screamed. Martha glimpsed him falling, their mother limp beside him. Then she turned, grabbed Tish's wrist, and dragged her back towards the center of the waiting room. But the metal monsters had closed in behind them; the two from surgery had been joined by two more.

"YOU WILL BE UPGRADED," the nearest one declared.

Martha yanked on Tish's arm, backing them away. Three more Cybermen, the ones who had attacked Leo, emerged from the direction of radiology. They were surrounded.

Martha realized Tish was sobbing.

"Don't cry, Tish," Martha said, squeezing her fingers. "Cos we'll get out of this. I'll get us out of this. I swear."

The Cybermen clustered around them. Martha crouched and picked up a twisted bar, remnant of a smashed waiting room chair.

"Martha?" Tish said, her voice quavering.

One of the Cybermen reached for Tish. Tish shrieked and Martha swung. "Run!" she screamed at Tish, battering uselessly at the Cyberman, the sound of metal on metal ringing through the ER. She saw Tish bolt out of the corner of her eye, darting between two of the Cybermen, and swung again. Attacking the Cybermen was suicide, Martha knew, but if Tish could get away--

Another Cyberman stepped out and gripped Tish's shoulder. Tish screamed. Martha smelled ozone and burning hair.

"No," Martha screamed. "NO!"

"DELETE," the Cybermen said, reaching towards her. Electricity danced over its fingertips.

Martha stood her ground, raising her useless bar. She howled as she struck at the approaching metal arm. Landing one last good hit on the Cyberman's chest, she braced herself to feel its electrified touch close on her shoulder.

The Cyberman toppled over.

Two of its companions followed, a moment later. Martha straightened, blinking, and stared.

In the gap left by the fallen Cybermen stood a man in a suit, holding a strange, pen-like object in his hand. He turned it on the remaining Cybermen, dropping them easily.

Martha's mouth fell open.

"Mister... Saxon?"

He flipped the pen-like object in the air before pocketing it, and smiled at her. "Lovely to see you again, Martha Jones," he said, casually, as if they'd just met on the street. "Maybe now you'll give me my kiss?" He tapped the mostly-healed cut on his forehead.

"Oh my god," Martha breathed. "Oh my god," she repeated, and she suddenly wanted, needed, to cry, but she held herself back. She didn't have time for tears; Tish needed her.

Dropping to her knees beside Tish, she rolled her sister over and tried to resuscitate her. "Tish, please," she gasped, between breathing for her sister, between pumping her sister's heart. But it was a useless exercise. Martha quickly realized Tish was beyond saving, though the urge to keep trying was overpowering. It was only the thought of her mum that stopped her.

She looked up at Saxon, trembling. "She's--. " she said. "I've got to get my mum." Her voice sounded flat in her own ears. She got up, walking, not running, feeling weird and detached.

She pushed past the doors to the radiology wing.

Leo's dead eyes were still wide with shock. Martha was surprised at how steady her hand was as she closed them.

She knelt beside her mother's prone body. Martha pressed her lips together and moved quickly so that she moved at all--she didn't want to touch her mother, but she had no choice. She felt for a pulse, found nothing.

"She's dead," Martha said. Her voice in the hall sounded flat, empty. Clinical. "They came here for nothing." A tremble crept her words. "She was dead this whole time. They came here for nothing!"

That was when Martha finally wept, wept so hard the world seemed to open up beneath her, swallow her up, send her head spinning. She wept for her mother, for Leo who had run with a dead body straight into the arms of the Cybermen, for Tish, for herself. She wept like a child, noisy, screaming out her pain, soaking the collar of her shirt and white coat with tears.

And then Harold Saxon embraced her.

She had forgotten he was there. She shoved him off at first, shouting, "Get away from me!" but he came back, shushing her, cooing, stroking her back and her hair and her face. He hugged her close until she relented, weeping against his shoulder, shaking.

"Poor brave Martha," he murmured to her. She sagged against him, into the tightness of his arms. "Poor dear Martha."

"I tried," she wept. "I tried to save them."

Saxon's hold on her tightened. He spoke softly into her ear. "Of course you did. Poor, dear, Doctor Jones." She pressed her face into his shoulder, comforted by his voice.

"I--I promised Tish--and then I--oh god, Mr. Saxon. This can't be real."

He shushed against her hair, petted her like a child. His words were soft and wrapped around her. "But it is real, poor, poor Miss Jones. Poor silly Martha. This is the real world; this is the truth: you can't save them. Don't you know that yet? You can't ever save them. You're useless."

She twisted in his embrace, stared at him, but he went on.

"Oh, maybe you prolong the life of some of them, but in the end," he smiled, a grim, humorless thing, "They all die."

"Why would you say that?" Rage rose to join Martha's fear and grief.

"Because," he said, "the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll feel so much better."

His arms tightened around her as she looked at him in horror, tried to push him off. But he was strong and she was tired, drained and tired and so sad she thought she could die of it. And worst of all, some part of her thought he was right: there was nothing she could have done. Life was horrible, death inevitable; she of all people knew that, saw it every day.

Martha wept, for her family, and for the part of herself that died with them.

Harold Saxon held her close. He whispered in her ear. "My poor Martha. My clever, sad, mad Martha Jones."

He whispered to Martha until her sobs quieted, until she was just listening to the rhythm of his voice, naming her over and over.


	3. Dry

Time flowed over and past Martha as if she were in a trance.

She tried desperately to get back on her feet again after all the horribleness that followed the Battle of Canary Wharf, but the list of the dead kept coming. In the end she lost not only Leo and Tish and her mum, but also her father, her cousin Adeola, her uncle Jess, Leo's fiancée Shonara, their daughter Keisha, even her father's blond mistress, Annalise.

Martha threw herself into her work, tried to heal herself by healing others, but every time she looked into the expectant faces of her patients, she thought: _You can't save them. You're useless. In the end, they all die._

More and more she drifted through her days, lingered at the back of the group on ward rounds and attended to patients with a minimum of conversation. She couldn't work in A&amp;E at all, found every other route to where she needed to be. She waited for Doctor Stoker to say something to her, tell her she was failing out of the program, but his gaze always slid past her as if she, too, were dead. Better, she supposed, than the blatant pity on his face the first day she returned to work, when she asked to be assigned elsewhere in the hospital.

It was Julia who finally confronted her, catching her arm in the hall. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Taking these samples to the lab."

"I don't mean that. You know I don't." Julia lowered her voice. "Stoker's talking about forcing you to take leave. I half think he should."

Martha looked away.

"Martha, you can't keep doing this. Take a break. Grieve, for God's sake."

"The funeral's tomorrow," Martha said. "Finally. I'll be better after the funeral." She tried to smile.

There were so many dead; the funeral homes were backed up for weeks. Martha had been lucky to wait only two.

"Miss Jones!"

Martha turned to see Nurse Chapham stalking towards her with an armful of flowers.

Or maybe not lucky, she thought.

Chapham thrust the flowers at Martha. "Your friend Saxon, again," she said, and Martha got the strange idea that she seemed jealous.

Julia raised her eyebrows as Chapham stalked away. Martha stared at the bouquet.

"I thought you just stitched up his head," Julia said. She, too, sounded strangely wistful, envious. "But now Harold Saxon himself sends you flowers every day."

Martha said nothing. Nothing of how he had saved her from the Cybermen, of how he had held her beside the bodies of her dead family, how he had whispered things into her ear. Of how she wished she had gone deaf before he could say those things to her. Of how she wished even more that she could hear him again.

She walked over to a waste bin and dropped the flowers inside. Julia gasped behind her, but Martha paid her no mind.

***

Martha tried to cry at the funeral, but she had no tears left. She had wasted them all in the emergency room, or maybe Saxon had soaked them all up, drunk them like some sort of confused vampire.

She half-expected to see him there, after all the flowers and condolences, but she never found his face among those who watched her out of the corners of their eyes at the service, or who wept for her by the graveside. She heard their words of comfort and sympathy from a thousand miles away, and barely felt their fingers squeeze hers. One by one they passed her, passed the four holes dug in the ground, and the four caskets lying inside. One by one she waited them out, waited for them to go away and leave her alone.

Her Aunt Lisha--Adeola's mum--lingered longest. Adeola's service was next week; Martha didn't know where she would find the strength to go to one more funeral. When they stood alone, just the two of them, Aunt Lisha said, "You're welcome to come by, Martha. Anytime. Stay over, if you like."

The air between them felt thick, as if Lisha's need to connect with Martha weighted it down. Martha knew she should reach out to her aunt. They were the last of the family in the UK, after all.

She kept her hands tucked against her sides, watched a fat tear roll down her aunt's face and settle in the dimple of her forced smile.

"Of course," Martha said. "Thank you, auntie."

That was not the answer her aunt was waiting for, but it was all Martha had to give. She saw the false smile fade from her aunt's face, and her aunt nodded. Lisha hesitated a moment before brushing her fingertips against Martha's upper arm. "Call me, any time," Lisha said. Unspoken desperation tinted her words. "We only have each other, now."

Martha watched Lisha hurry away towards the last waiting car, off to a family friend's house for condolences and casserole.

"No," she told Lisha's retreating back, "I've got nobody."

Martha turned back to the four headstones, the four gaping wounds in the earth. She willed herself to feel anything but empty, empty, empty, but nothing came. She was hollow, scooped out, a grave herself.

She knelt at the foot of her mother's grave, touched her fingers to the graveyard dirt and shut her dry eyes. "Why can't I cry, mum?" she said. "Why don't I feel anything?"

"Poor, brave Martha Jones."

A mad tangle of emotions went through Martha at the sound of that voice, more potent than anything she had felt since That Day: surprise, anger, pleasure, even something that might have been fear. She clamped her teeth together against a scream that threatened to explode out of her and turned to face the man beside her.

Harold Saxon's elbows were propped on his knees, his fingers steepled between them. His face was so solemn it was nearly a parody. When he caught her looking he produced a smile, a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

"Still telling yourself you could have saved them?"

"Why do you say things like that?" she asked, through gritted teeth.

He shrugged, careless. "It's only the truth. The sooner you accept it--"

"'The sooner I'll feel better.' I know. I don't believe you." Martha stood, staring him down. She pulled the comforting blankness she had embraced in the past weeks around herself, regaining some measure of control. "What are you doing here, Mr. Saxon?"

He gave her a smile. "Can't a man pay his respects to the dearly departed?"

"You didn't even know them."

"Ah, but I know you, Miss Jones." He pressed his steepled fingertips against his lips, then tilted them towards her. "I owe you, you might even say."

"I put three stitches in your head. That was it."

"And now it's all better, see?" He tapped his forehead with two fingers. "Very nice work."

Martha frowned. She took a deep breath. "Look, Mr. Saxon, you've been very kind to me, and I'm very grateful." She tried to smile. "But you seem to have got some idea in your head that just because you--you saved me, you need to look after me now. If that's what you think, please, I'm all right. Really. I am."

She expected him to get up and go, or to tell her she was being quite rude. Instead, he laughed. "Oh, Miss Jones," he said, "You're giving me far too much credit."

Martha frowned. "Then, what?" She couldn't quite make it to anger, even though she wanted to rage at him. "What are you doing here, Mr. Saxon? What is it you want from me?"

His eyes hooded and his smile broadened. "Everything," he said.

Martha stared at Saxon, but she couldn't read his face. He went on:

"But we can start with supper. Supper is nice. It's just about supper time, isn't it?"

"Are you joking?"

"Not at all."

Martha narrowed her eyes. She shook her head and started walking, unwilling to play his stupid games. He stepped into her way, and no matter how she tried to sidestep him, he matched her, blocking her.

"Stop that!"

"Only if you'll come to supper with me."

"No thank you."

She took another step; he all but danced in front of her, smiling pleasantly. "I know a very nice place in Soho."

"I said no. Now, stop it!" Anger surged hot under her breastbone, into her cheeks. Martha tried to shove him aside. Saxon laughed as he held his ground. His fingers wrapped around her upper arms and all but caressed her. She flinched at his touch, but her reasons for flinching were confused.

"Let go of me!"

Saxon surprised her by obliging her, moving smoothly aside. She walked away as quickly as she could, but he followed.

"You know, you ought to eat, Miss Jones," he said, conversationally, keeping up with her without much effort. "And sleep. You're starting to look terrible."

She stopped short. "Eat? Sleep? My family died. All of them." She felt something inside her waver and tremble, but never give in. Martha wanted to be drowned under the flood of her grief, to be a wreck, to be demolished, but the strength in her held, impossibly. "All of them, and I can't even cry, even though I want to, more than anything."

She looked over at Saxon, her dry eyes agonizing her.

"I can't cry for my mum and my brother and my sis and my dad, not since... since _then_. What's wrong with me?" Martha heard her voice rising, wondered if she was cracking, going mad here in the graveyard.

Saxon reached a gloved hand towards her face. Martha recoiled, striking his arm away. An idea surfaced, and made its way to her lips before she could censor it for ridiculousness. "Was it you? Is that why I can't cry, why I feel--why I'm like a hundred miles away from everything? Did you do something to me?"

Saxon raised his eyebrows and she saw his teeth, briefly, in the triangular reveal of his smile. "Oh, you _are_ trouble, Martha Jones." He laughed, softly, in a way that made a shiver crawl up her spine. "But much as I'd love to claim the credit, I'm afraid you've done that all by yourself. You lot are so terribly good at that sort of thing."

Martha hated him then, in a way that made her feel good, that burned away the grief and the fear and the deadness blanketing her. She hated him because she knew deep down what he said was true, that she was utterly capable of shutting herself off, turning herself to stone, of standing at her family's gravesite and feeling nothing. Hadn't she done the very same thing in the waiting room, while her family was killed in front of her?

"'You lot'?" she said, hotly, "Who? Us women? Blacks? Middle-class? Doctors? You keep doing that, talking like you're... outside, somehow." She drew her brows together. "Those things you said to me that day... All those words I couldn't get out of my head." Her thumb started twitching an angry cadence against her thigh; she stopped it by making a fist.

He smirked, and didn't answer. She wanted beat her fists against his chest and shake that smirk off his face, rattle him until he said something.

"And that--that pen you had. What was it? You just stopped those Cybermen like they were nothing. I kept telling myself you must have all sorts of technology, head of Archangel and all that, but it was--that wasn't it at all, was it?"

"This?" Saxon took the pen-like thing out of his inner pocket. "Just a laser screwdriver."

He held it out to her, and she took it, her eyes widening as she turned it around and around in her hands. It was heavier than it looked, intricate but compact, with parts she couldn't begin to understand the purpose of. She let out a long breath between her lips and looked hard at him.

"Just who _are_ you?"

"Harold Saxon," he said. But his eyes were bright, daring her, she thought, to push further.

"No, that's not it. That's not all, at least."

"Say it, then. If you're so clever, Miss Jones, spell it out for me."

"Are you... are you from where ever those Cybermen were from? No." She studied his face. "But you're not from here, are you?" She drew in a sharp breath. "Are you even human?"

Saxon gave her such a pleased, delighted grin that she nearly returned it. Then, wordlessly, he turned away from her, and Martha took several steps after him before she realized what she was doing. She stopped herself, but he stopped as well, and she knew that he had noticed.

Without turning, Saxon said to her, "Come have supper with me, and you'll understand everything. I'll take you to my favorite place. How about it, Martha Jones?"

"Why are you so obsessed with supper?"

"Why not?"

She hesitated, narrowing her eyes. "That all you want? Supper?"

He glanced back at her over his shoulder, flashing his teeth. "Of course not. Coming?"

Martha took a deep breath. She didn't trust him, not even a little, and he made no real effort to hide that his intentions were not all good. She knew she should watch him walk away and hope he would be gone from her life forever. But she was curious, so curious. And he could make her angry, make her hate, make her wonder. That was better, wasn't it, than nothing, better than standing at her family's gravesite feeling empty?

She cast a look back at the four headstones behind her. Martha hesitated just a moment, wavering, and then she hurried after Harold Saxon.


	4. Eyes Open

Martha had expected fine china, expensive wines, waiters tripping all over themselves to serve _the_ Harold Saxon. So she began to have serious doubts when the car stopped somewhere in the warehouse district.

"I take it this is a very exclusive place," Martha said, dryly, as Saxon unlocked a warehouse door with a tap-tap-tap-tap of his fingers on keypad. She thought she was probably mad for following him inside; he might kill her, or worse. She went in, anyway.

Inside, the warehouse was one long corridor punctuated by endless doors, all guarded by keypads and blinking lights. Martha tried to look inside the narrow windows, but all she saw were shadows. Saxon led her to the last door. It had no keypad, just a glowing ring of blue light cast in front of the door.

He stepped into the ring and the door whooshed open.

"Ah, dear Torchwood, you had your uses," he remarked, stepping inside.

The small room beyond contained a single object: a blue wooden box that resembled a telephone box, emblazoned with the words "POLICE BOX" across the top.

The warnings going off in Martha's head rose to a volume she could no longer ignore. Crossing her arms over her chest, she stopped near the doorway. "All right," she said, "I think I've played along quite long enough. I thought you were taking me to supper."

"I am."

"Then what are we doing here? Unless I'm about to walk through those doors and be transported to, I dunno, Narnia or something--"

Saxon beamed at her. "Almost." When she gave him a skeptical look, he said, "Oh, come on, Miss Jones. Don't get all Doubting Thomas on me now. I know you're not, so there's no use in pretending."

Beckoning her along, he strode forward. He took out a key and slid it into the lock on the box's door. The key stuck as he tried to turn it. Saxon scowled. "Come on, you difficult little--!" The lock gave with an audible snick. "Ah, there we are!"

Saxon shoved the doors open. He cast his arms apart dramatically.

"Ta-dah!"

Martha thought of witches shoving little children into ovens for supper, and rich men with nasty habits of shoving grief-maddened medical students into strange blue boxes for worse reasons. She stepped forward to see anyway.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

Beyond the blue doors was an impossibly huge space, a large round cabin studded with strange knobby protrusions and supported by organic-looking arches. In the center was a tall, clear column housing some machinery, surrounded by a console full of dials and switches and levers.

"What? But that's--!" Wonder obliterated everything else Martha was feeling. She took a few steps forward into the box, then a few steps more. She circled the round console in the center, turned in the faintly reddish light, and ran back outside. She touched the solid wood of the sides and back of the box before returning to the entrance. "That's amazing," she breathed, suddenly dizzy with the impossible reality. "It's--it's bigger on the inside!"

She spun and faced Saxon, who was watching her with a smug sort of delight. She pressed her palm against one of the strange, coral-like struts curving towards the ceiling. "Is this some sort of space ship in disguise?"

"That and more, my dear."

"_Your_ space ship?"

"It's mine now."

"Now?" she asked, but she wasn't really listening, and he didn't answer. Martha hovered her hands over the console. The thing looked jury-rigged, parts of the console opened up, tubes and wires and other things Martha couldn't name spilling out. "Is it broken?"

"It was," Saxon said, something gloating in his tone. "But it's beginning to see who's master."

"Does it have a name?" Martha stared up into the clear column, and then crouched down to look through the grated flooring beneath her feet.

"The TARDIS."

She poked at a rubber mallet discarded in a corner and her lips quirked, almost making it to a smile. "That's a funny name. Is that your language, then?"

"TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Time, space, it's all at our fingertips."

She gawked; she couldn't help it. "Wait. Are you saying it's a space ship _and_ a time machine?"

"Humans," Saxon said. For a moment she glimpsed a disgust that was quite possibly the most genuine emotion he'd ever shown her, and then it was gone, hidden under a falsely patient smile. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. We can go anywhere, any_when_\--well, nearly, due to meddling little friends who think it's funny to--but that's neither here nor there. That won't be an issue soon."

"Oh, that is too much!"

Saxon walked a circle around the console, stopping across from Martha. His fingertips tapped against the rounded edge of an opened panel before curling just inside. There was something slightly obscene, invasive, about his hands resting there. "How can you still doubt, Miss Jones? It wasn't so long ago that tin men from a parallel Earth were marching around, trying to upgrade humanity."

She tore herself away from the movement of his hands. "But I saw that, with my own two eyes. And I didn't know they were from a parallel Earth."

"So little faith," Saxon said, mock-sadly. "All right. I'll show your two lovely, lovely eyes. If you could go to any where, any time, Miss Jones, in the past or future year, where and when would you go?"

"Oh." Martha's face fell, her grief returning in a sudden, sharp rush. "You have to ask?" Her heart began to race as she considered the possibilities. "Can we--can we go back to--to save them?"

Saxon's mouth twitched. "Ahh. Sorry. I should have said 'not directly affecting your own past.' There are rules, you know. Paradoxes and reapers and ruining the pattern of the universe and all that. Save them, and you could destroy a hundred other lives. But I can take you back to that day, if you'd care to relive it."

Martha shook her head, horrified. "Absolutely not." She looked away, feeling awful for how much she'd been enjoying herself. "Maybe... maybe I shouldn't be here at all."

"None of that," Saxon said. "Self-pity doesn't become you. When shall we go, Miss Jones?"

"I don't know." Martha shook her head again. "How about..." She groped for something harmless. "Well, before everything..." She swallowed. "Julia kept asking me to go with her to a book release party for 'Deathly Hallows' next week. I told her I wasn't interested, so I'm not likely to run into myself there, am I? Or will I destroy the universe by seeing Julia when I'm not supposed to?"

Saxon wrinkled his nose and laughed. "A book release party? I'm astounded at your lack of vision, Miss Jones. Oh, all right. That should be harmless enough. If it'll make you believe me."

He moved quickly and with purpose around the console; she had to jump out of his way as he reached into one of the opened panels and did something to create a shower of sparks. "Come on, you old cow!" he scowled, kicking the edge of the console; suddenly the ship lurched and the clear column in the center illuminated a greenish-orange as machinery began pumping inside. "Here we go!" The room was filled with an eerie, whooshing pulse.

The sound lasted just long enough for Martha to ask "What is that?" before it stopped. Saxon whirled the monitor towards himself, nodded, and then crooked his arm towards her.

"Right on time. Of course. Shall we?" he said.

She hesitated, and then took his arm. "All right," she said, doubtfully, and walked with him out of the TARDIS.

Martha was startled to find it was full night outside. They were in an alley and she could hear excited voices just around the corner. She glanced at Saxon who smiled at her indulgently, and cocked his head towards the street.

They rounded the corner and someone shouted, "Martha Jones?"

Martha turned to see Julia waving her down the queue of people.

"Oh my god. Martha, it is you. I haven't seen you in a week--where have you... Oh my god!" Julia noticed Martha's escort with a widening of her eyes. "Is that--are you--Harold Saxon?" She looked back at Martha, and at their linked arms. "Martha Jones, you don't tell me anything any more! Katie--" Julia elbowed the woman she was with; Martha saw that it was Nurse Chapham. "Look who's here. And who with."

Nurse Chapham acknowledged Martha with a frown, then saw Saxon. She goggled, and looked momentarily unsteady. "Mr. Saxon," she gasped. "It's--it's an honor to meet you, sir. _Kiss Me, Kill Me_ is my favorite book!"

Julia dragged Martha slightly aside as Chapham fluttered and fawned.

"How are you, love?" Julia said. "Honestly, you could've called. I was really beginning to worry. I rang your flat four times this week. Stoker's all but written you off. Why didn't you say something? I was starting to think you--" she swallowed. "That maybe you decided to join your family." She looked grim.

Martha had to stop herself from saying, "But I just saw you this morning!"

"I'm sorry. Things have just been--complicated, lately."

Julia shot a look towards Saxon, who had acquired a circle of admirers. "Apparently so. And to think we all came here for Rowling's new book." She jerked her chin toward the storefront, where piles of the latest Harry Potter awaited the stroke of midnight. "If I buy a copy of _Kiss Me, Kill Me_ do you think he'll sign it for me?"

Martha barely heard her, staring at the clerk heading towards the door with keys in hand.

"So it's really the twenty-first?" Martha breathed, feeling a bit dizzy.

"In--" Julia glanced at her mobile. "Three minutes, yeah. Martha, you all right?"

"I--yeah." Martha shook her head. "I'm sorry, but... I've got to get going."

"Martha!"

Ignoring Julia's pleas to stay, Martha hurried back towards the alley. She was dimly aware of Saxon excusing himself and catching up with her.

"What?" he said, "Don't want a copy of the book? Prove to yourself it's real?"

"I believe," she said, breathlessly.

"Ah, it's all rubbish anyway. Wizards and monsters and magic."

"Hey, I loved those books," Martha said, without much force.

"I can show you so much more, and so much better. And it'll be real."

"Is that a good thing?"

They reached the TARDIS doors; he unlocked them, held the door for her. She hurried inside.

"Shall I take you home, then?" he asked, his tone edging on derisive.

Raising her eyebrows, she turned to him, surprised. "I have a choice?"

"Of course you do. What fun would it be if you didn't?"

"No, I don't want to go home," Martha said. She turned to him slowly. "I'm not upset. I'm actually... I'm just. A bit. Bowled over. We're in the future! I can't get my head around it." She laughed and was all-too aware of the tight, high shrillness of it. "I haven't gone completely mad, have I?"

"No, just slightly bonkers," he said. He closed the doors and leaned against them, then erased the distance between them with two energetic leaps that undermined the seriousness of his suit. His arm slid over her shoulders. Martha started to tell him to keep his hands to himself, but he pressed a finger against her lips and she was too startled by the coldness of his hands to finish.

"Well, if you're staying, we've got to be going. Promised you supper and answers, didn't I? And..." He looked her up and down. "We'll need to get you changed. Something nicer, more cheery. If you'll head left, then second right, then third left--oh, just start walking, you'll hit a wardrobe, and you ought to find a few things that'll fit you perfectly. How about red? I do love red."

"I am getting hungry." She managed a tentative smile. "So where... when are we going?"

He strolled over to the console, began turning knobs and winding up a handle. "It's a surprise. Well?"

Martha nodded, and headed off to find the wardrobe. She was already in over her head; she might as well start trying to swim.


	5. The Dark

Everything had gone dark.

It was black, black, black all around Martha, an all-consuming blackness she had never known. It swallowed the light from the TARDIS greedily and made some kind of primal fear rise in her, set her insides screaming.

Still giddy from their first stop, she had foolishly rushed out of the TARDIS doors as soon as they landed, eager to see what lay beyond. But what she thought was night was not, and she froze as she was embraced by a never-ending darkness.

Saxon stepped out beside her.

"Where are we?" She drew closer to him, not quite touching.

"The year one-hundred-trillion. The end of time," Saxon said, spreading his arms towards the never-ending darkness beyond. "This is the absolute end of the universe."

Martha shook her head. "That's impossible," she said, but something in her gut seemed to believe, the same thing that screamed against the unnatural darkness. "Why are we here?"

Saxon began walking forward without answering. She lunged after him and caught his arm, stumbling over the rocky ground. He laughed at her and patted her hand. She couldn't help but think he was being patronizing.

It was bitter cold and the ground was rocky, littered with loose gravel. Martha cursed Saxon's suggestion that she dress up--red, who could even see it!--and her stupid choice of heels. She cursed her stupid decision to go with him, for momentarily trusting him. She cursed herself for clinging to his arm like a scared little girl. But she couldn't let go.

"Come on. Didn't you say you were hungry?" Saxon said, and she wanted to hit him for the mocking laughter behind his words.

"What could we ever find to eat here?" she hissed at him, angry to cover up her fear.

"You'd be surprised." He stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Martha heard the distant whirr of something approaching, and fell back a step behind Saxon.

Winking stars appeared in the distance, and at first she thought some cloud cover had moved, that it was not truly as black and suffocating as she'd thought. Then the stars grew as the whirring grew louder, and she realized she was seeing lights on the surface of flying metal spheres. The spheres were approaching with an alarming speed.

Strange, high-pitched noises join the whirring sound. It took Martha a moment to realize they were words spoken in childish tones:

"Supper time! Supper time!" and, "The Master is here! Mr. Master. We like the Master."

"'The master'?" Martha said, unable to keep the scorn out of her voice. She threw a disbelieving look at Saxon.

He shrugged, carelessly. "'The Master' is my real name, Miss Jones. Well... as near as you'll get."

Martha stared. She released his arm, recoiling. "I'm never calling you that."

His mouth curved. "I'm patient."

Saxon turned a circle, smiling beatifically at the spheres now hovering above his head. Martha thought she should probably be more grateful for what little light they lent, but she wasn't. Something about them bothered her.

"My friends. How nice to see you all again."

"Master!" the spheres squealed. "We're so glad you're back."

"We were getting so lonely."

"We've had the bodies put out your supper. Just like you said!"

"The Master will be back for supper!"

"And here I am," Saxon said. "May I introduce my lovely companion--?"

"Martha," one of the spheres chirruped. "Martha Jones."

Martha spun to face Saxon as the spheres clustered around her. "How do they know my name? Did you tell them I was coming?"

The spheres kept up their eager babble: "The skies are made of diamonds! We're the diamonds now, Martha, diamonds in the sky! Aren't we so pretty?"

"You helped us get here! We couldn't forget you!"

"You helped us find Utopia!"

"You helped us fly! You saved us!"

"What are they talking about?" Martha tried not to flinch as they drew closer and closer. "Sorry, um, whatever you are, I think you've got me confused--"

"Not at all," Saxon said. "You did help them, Martha. Or rather, you will."

"Oh. I. What?" Martha stared.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it." He patted her cheek. She swatted him away.

"You can't just--"

Saxon wrapped an arm around her and steered her away from the TARDIS. "Come on, Miss Jones! The lady wants supper, my friends!"

She shrugged him off. "No, I don't. I want some straight answers."

"After supper."

Martha pressed her lips together and followed after the line of spheres, which bobbed and danced in front of her. They walked for a long time before they finally approached a huddle of buildings. The buildings were clustered around a row of massive furnaces, burning futilely against the darkness.

"In here!" The lead sphere bobbed and swooped. "Supper for the Master!"

Martha stepped into the lighted space, blinking at the sudden brilliance. She accepted a seat before she realized what was offering it to her. "Oh my god!" She leapt to her feet. "What is that?"

A headless corpse stood behind her, its hands still on the chair back. Where its neck should have been was a mass of mechanics, all black metal and blinking lights, like the spheres. Martha could smell it, chemical, like formaldehyde. Her stomach rolled.

"Don't be afraid, Martha Jones," one of the spheres crooned. "It's just a body."

"We need the bodies," another sphere chimed in. "They helped us become what we are."

"Soon we won't need them any more. We just need to finish."

Martha clutched the edge of her seat, leaning as far from the "body" as she could. "Finish what?"

"Finish changing."

"Making ourselves better."

"Making ourselves prettier."

"Soon we'll be able to do everything, without the bodies."

Saxon took a seat across from her. The table between them looked made of some sort of cannibalized metal, pitted and scarred, but it was solid enough. There was a steaming, battered pot, and some sort of dried meat, as well as a foil-wrapped packet. Saxon reached for the packet and tore it open to reveal dry, hard biscuits. He leaned across the table and told her in a stage whisper, "EMR-rations from the Omni group. I'd stick to these, if I were you. Maybe a bit stale, but... I don't think the meat will be to your liking."

"Thanks," she said, pretty sure he'd informed her just to make her nauseated. "But I'm not hungry any more."

He grinned at her and bit into a biscuit. The spheres hovered around them.

"Have some supper, pretty Martha."

"Eat something, kind Martha."

They bobbed and danced around her until she took a biscuit just to make them happy. "Here, see?" She nibbled a corner and nearly spat it out; it tasted like wet soil in her mouth.

"Nice Martha, good Martha!"

She gave them a tight smile and turned, slightly desperately, to Saxon. "Who are they? Why do they know me?"

"As they said. You save them, Miss Jones."

"I think I would've remembered something like that." Martha dropped the biscuit to the table.

"Well, for you, it's yet to happen yet. For me that was the past. Oh, it's all a bit mixed up." Saxon scrunched up his face.

"What do you--?"

Martha stopped mid-sentence as the spheres suddenly ceased their gentle bobbing, freezing mid-air; and then they left her, swirling into a loose line and out the door. She tried to see where they'd gone, squinting into the dim outside, but her eyes could make out nothing.

She heard perfectly well, however. The distinct sound of running feet--human feet, she thought--and fearful grunts. She rose.

"Stay," Saxon said.

His tone was so cold, so absolute, that she obeyed. When she heard the eerie, childlike laughter and then the screams, she was glad she did.

"What was that?"

Saxon chewed another biscuit and shrugged.

"Just cleaning up the vermin, I expect," he said.

"Vermin? That sounded like a person."

Saxon shrugged again as the spheres returned to the room, whirring and whirling and spinning. One had several sharp blades protruding from its base, which it withdrew with a slick sound. Another was spattered with red blood, some of which slowly dripped onto the table as it hovered in front of her.

"Silly thing," it told her. "They like to run and run and run. They were like us once. But now they have no minds at all. They make good bodies, though."

"And play fun games with us!" The sphere demonstrated what sort of games it meant by vaporizing the dried meat with some sort of laser.

"'Like us once'? They're what you used to be?"

"They don't want to change. So we have to get rid of them!"

"Do you want to play with them too, nice Martha?"

"No. Thank you." Martha shuddered. She fixed a plastic smile on her face and turned to Saxon. "And perhaps Mr. Saxon and I ought to be going, now."

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. "Don't you like your handiwork, Miss Jones?"

"My handiwork?"

"I've always thought," Saxon remarked, looking up at her and then at the spheres, "that some people aren't meant to be doctors." Martha tensed, but Saxon didn't notice, or didn't care. "They're attracted to trouble, to broken things, and they think they're supposed to fix them, and then they just make a worse mess. But you, Miss Jones... Look at the marvels you've achieved! Now that is what I call healing."

Martha furrowed her brow. "I don't--?"

"Stars burnt out. Worlds gone cold. All of creation, dying. And yet--humanity survives, thanks to Martha Jones." He looked up at the spheres circling Martha.

"Humanity? You don't mean--. They can't be human."

"Always need to see with your own two eyes, do you?" Saxon reached up, spread his hand beneath one of the spheres. It lowered itself to rest against his fingertips. "Why don't you open up, my friend? All of you. Open up and show the pretty lady your faces."

The sphere rotated on its axis rapidly. "But we're afraid, Master. Our eyes are afraid. Afraid of the dark."

"Do it."

The spheres lowered to Martha's eye level; one by one, they split open. Inside each, nestled among machinery and punctured by tubes and pins, was a withered-looking human head.

Martha felt her gorge rise. She clenched her teeth until she thought they would crack, but still the end of a scream escaped between her mashed-together lips.

"Aren't we pretty?" The spheres covered up their all-too human faces, and then twirled in mid-air. "Aren't we pretty, sweet Martha, kind Martha?"

Saxon caught her shoulder as she stumbled back. He pressed his mouth close to her ear. "What's one dead family when you help turn the remnants of humanity into this?"

"They _can't_ be human," Martha said, filled with revulsion.

"Ask them. I'm sure they've got medical records, anatomical diagrams--you need that sort of thing, after all, when you decide to chop off your heads and become floating cyborgs."

"Yes! We can show you!" a sphere volunteered. "We can show you how to be just like us. Martha Jones, you were kind to us. You helped us fly."

"How could I? I'm dead," Martha whispered. "I'm dead. By the year one-hundred trillion, I'm cold and rotted and dust."

"Not," Saxon purred, "if you have a TARDIS."

"Oh god," she said.

"Yes." He knelt beside her, turning her face towards him with the fingertips of his hand.   
"Even at the end of all things, you help them cling just a little longer. Ever the little... doctor. Don't you want to know the story? It's a very good story. Touching, if I do say so myself."

She shook her head. He kept on speaking.

"Picture it: Malcassairo, one of the last strongholds of humankind, huddling against the darkness and the death of everything around them, rapidly going extinct. Yearning to join what's left of the human race at fabled Utopia. Aided by one noble, selfless, creative genius--that's me, of course--but missing one crucial piece of knowledge. And then who should arrive but a brave, good-hearted, curious young lady?"

Saxon grinned, a shark's smile if she ever saw one. "You asked why I'm so interested in you, Miss Jones. Well, I'll tell you. You saved me, too. Or you will. I was lost, and then I felt your sweet little hands on me, and I was found. You gave me the missing piece, and together we sent the human race off to their new fate."

"It was cold, so cold," one of the spheres said, rotating anxiously. "We had to fix ourselves. We learned from you, and the Master."

"You were so clever."

"We decided to be clever too!"

"We're clever too, aren't we?"

"The Master makes such clever things. The Doctor fixes them. We can do it too."

"We fixed ourselves!"

"We fixed the bodies and the runaways!"

The spheres began giggling and whirling, flicking their blades in and out.

"They're mad," Martha breathed. "All mad."

"You're going to hurt their feelings, Miss Jones. They're our responsibility." Saxon's hand curled against the back of her neck, pulled her against his chest. "We're the proud parents of the future human race!"

She shook him off, and stood, wrapping her arms around herself. Martha shuddered. "No," she said, gasping. "No. If it's true, if any of this isn't just lies--! Now that I know, I won't do any of it. I'll go home. I'll stay there, in the past--present--the time I'm supposed to be."

"You could try that. And then what? Paradox. Chaos. You've already done it, already lived to witness the effects of your actions. You'll tear apart the pattern of the universe. Is that what you want?" Saxon's eyes were suddenly bright. "Is it?"

She thought he almost wanted her to say yes. Her lips began to form the word before she shook her head, vehemently.

"Of course not!"

She felt like he had spun her around and around and around, like the ground was whirling under her feet and over her head.

The spheres hovered, chirping, "But you saved us, Martha Jones!"

"We like you, Martha. Don't you like us?"

"No." Hot, angry tears spilled down Martha's cheeks, frustrated tears, hateful tears. "No, stop saying that. I didn't save you. I didn't."

"Look into my face, Miss Jones, and tell me I'm lying."

Martha stared into Saxon's face, telling herself he was a politician, a businessman, not even human. That she could trust nothing she saw there, not the sneering amusement, the hint of impatience, the laugh curving his eyes and curling his lips.

"You're responsible," he said, and she saw no lie, heard no deceit. But more than that, she knew herself. If she had come across these people, stranded, why wouldn't she help them? Even knowing, as she did, what they would become. At least they would live, wouldn't they? No threat to anyone but themselves.

"Isn't it a good thing, Martha?" Saxon murmured to her. His arm slid over her shoulders, pulled her close, and this time she didn't step away from him. "Isn't that what you've always wanted, saving people?"

"You helped us, Martha Jones."

"You helped us become pretty!"

"Pretty?" Martha repeated, looking up at the spheres from within the prison of Saxon's arms. "You're monsters." She laughed through her tears, knowing how mad she sounded, hardly caring. "You're all monsters," she said, including Saxon in the sweep of her gaze, holding his eyes at the end of it.

And what was she, who stood dry-eyed at her family's graves, who went gallivanting off with strangers before the dirt was cast over them? Who strode in so arrogantly like some would-be hero and "rescued" the human race?

The part of Martha that had been clinging to doubt, to deniability, slipped closer to the yawning darkness opened up inside of her. A sob caught in her throat.

"And I help. I help make you monsters."

"My dear Martha." Saxon held her a little away, brushing away the hair sticking to her wet cheeks with his fingertips. "Here at the end of universe, we're all monsters."

He kissed her then, and she laughed against his lips at the madness of it all, being kissed by a monster at the end of time, and she let him.


	6. Your Eyes Will Adjust

Martha stood in the dark, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the square white light of the TARDIS windows.

"In the end," she said, "They all die."

Snakelike, Saxon's hand slid up against the small of her back. She didn't step away, or rebuke him for it. Her eyes never left the TARDIS.

"What's the point?" she said. "What is the point of something as wonderful as being able to travel all time and space when you can't even fix all those horrible wrongs?"

"Maybe we did it for good reason," she said. "Maybe we thought we were helping them, sending them away to go mad in the dark. But what's the point? When the last star dies, when the universe collapses, when time ends... there's nothing. Nothing."

"If I could make something like the TARDIS," she said, "I would fix so many things. Never mind paradoxes. I'd find a way to fix those, too. I would do it."

"Bent but not broken. Not entirely. I see why he was drawn to you." Saxon's voice startled her. She'd all but forgotten he was there. "Maybe you should've been a Time Lord."

"Time Lord?"

"My people. Gone now, but..." Martha saw genuine emotion pass over Saxon's face, though she couldn't name it. "We ruled all Time, saw the all the possibilities and patterns of the universe. Could change them, if we wanted. It was our birthright, our nature, our being. There were no paradoxes when the Time Lords were in their glory days, no chaos but that which we controlled. Such an empire, Miss Jones."

"What happened to them?"

"I don't know," Saxon said. "But... all things die, don't they, Miss Jones?"

Finally turning her face away from the light of the TARDIS, she glanced at him. "How can you not know, if you are one?"

He didn't answer her. His features pinched, his eyes narrowed.

Some part of Martha wanted to push and probe, wanted to draw out the real anger there, provoke him. Cleopatra and the asp. She let the question rise to her lips and then slide away, unvoiced. It was becoming so easy to let everything slide over her, past her. She had looked at the end of time, the end of humankind, hadn't she? Found herself complicit. What could be worse?

The pale white light of the TARDIS drew her gaze again. It was comforting, quieted the screaming inside of her. She had the brief, foolish notion that it was alive, reaching out to her, but Saxon spoke and broke the illusion.

"There is one way still to do it."

He could sound, she thought, so compassionate, so comforting, when he wanted.

"To save your family, to change things, and not pull apart the fabric of reality. To even stop yourself from doing any of this. From saving me, if you like, although you won't be able to get rid of me that easily."

She knew he was baiting her, dangling the carrot on the string, and that he might pull it away the instant she reached for it. But Martha reached all the same.

"How?"

"It won't be pretty, or easy."

"How?" she repeated.

"When we were at the height of our power, some made paradox machines to allow contradictory timelines to exist. We could do it. Unfortunately--we'll have to butcher the TARDIS to make one."

"Then how could I go back and save them?"

"There is one other TARDIS in all the universe. I know the day it comes to Earth again--and how you can get a hold of it."

"Steal it, you mean?"

"Borrow it," he said, smiling.

She shook her head. "No. I love my family, and I want them to live--but that just seems wrong. 'Cos, I'll know what I've done, how I saved them."

"You can change that too. Change yourself so that we never meet. Save yourself."

She faced him. "My--I'll change too, if I do that? I won't remember?"

"Well. You'll still exist, thanks to the paradox machine, but that other you, that Martha Jones, won't remember. And once you fix her--well, up to you what you want to do with yourself."

Martha stared at the light of the TARDIS. She said, without emotion: "Don't pretend you're doing this for me. I know you're not."

"No," Saxon said smiling. "You're no fool, are you, Miss Jones?"

"Why do you want the paradox machine?"

"I--" His hesitation was so slight, she never would have caught it before. But she was beginning to know him, Harold Saxon, the Master, whoever he was. She was beginning to see into him, and that disturbed her, as much as she could still be disturbed. She knew he was going to lie. "I wish to bring back Gallifrey. My home. To do that, I need to find out what happened."

She nodded, beginning to see. "Another TARDIS, another Time Lord. And me, what am I? Bait?"

He drew her close, turned his face and breathed in against her hair. "Clever Martha Jones. I do like you." She shivered, for too many reasons. "After you bring him to me, I don't care what you do. Take his TARDIS. Save your family. My gift to you, for assisting me, for serving as my... companion."

She slipped away from him and walked up to the TARDIS, put her hand against the blue wooden doors.

"This is wrong," Martha said. "So, so wrong."

"But you want it, don't you, Martha Jones?"

She shivered again, because he was right. Even if she couldn't give herself another chance, she would find a way to give her family another one. She would use Saxon as much as he used her. And if he ever showed her his back--

The blue wood was warm as she pressed her cheek against it. "If you are alive," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'll find a way to make it right."

Then she turned and faced Saxon. She even managed to smile. She damned herself, hoping to save herself.

"Yes."

"Yes, what?" he said, gloating, and she let him gloat.

The words all but burned her tongue as she said them, but she got them out.

"Yes, Master."


	7. Falling Down

The Master brought Martha back to modern-day London, and made her a queen.

She still worked at the Royal Hope, but only because the Master said that was where the other Time Lord would come looking for her. When her shifts ended, there was always a car waiting for her, waiting to carry her to adorn Harold Saxon's arm.

He took her out on the town. He seemed to love showing her off for some reason she couldn't fathom, so they went dancing and socializing, rubbing shoulders with the London political elite. She learned to smile and laugh and be as charming as he was, when it suited her. She called him "Harry" to others, learned to look as if she were in love. She became famous, infamous. She saw her picture in the tabloids, and sometimes late at night she cried to herself over them, wondering what Tish would've made of all this.

She was aware that she was slowly becoming more and more like him--mad, yes, but also seeing the people around her as if they were not hers, as if she was outside, somehow.

Some nights, when she felt that distance keenly and when he was in good spirits, she swallowed his charm and flattery and pretended it was real. There were times that she could almost pretend to love the Master as much as she hated him. She told herself that they were using each other. They were, after all, uniquely set apart and bound together by their purpose.

That was what she told herself the night he came back to their shared flat, eyes bright and all but glowing with victory, dragging her up out of her seat and spinning her around.

"Guess what's happened?" he prompted her, like an eager child. "Ask me, Martha Jones."

"What's happened, Harry Saxon?" she said, because she wanted to know, and not because she was obliging him.

He crooked his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. "I've heard a little rumor from a very reliable source that one Harold Saxon is about to be named Minister of Defense."

"And so it begins."

"Aren't you happy for me?" He inserted himself into her line of sight and pouted dramatically.

She pointed to her lips. "See me smiling?"

"Aww, come on, Martha. Be happy for me."

"I'm happy if it gets us closer to the machine being done and this other Time Lord."

"Oof, so single minded!" The Master clutched his chest. "Please, Martha, just a little smile?"

Her mouth twitched, and the corner pulled up. He whooped and pulled her round and round again, and kissed her, and despite herself she kissed him back. Then he dropped down on one knee in front of her while the world continued to spin.

"What are you doing?"

"Martha Jones," he said, all overacted solemnity, "Every good politician needs a wife."

He produced a ring from his pocket and presented it to her.

Martha's stomach lurched. "I--I can't."

"Who do we have," the Master said to her, "but each other?"

His words brought the lonely burden of what she had done, what she would do, crashing down on her.

Martha reached out and took the ring.

"It means nothing," she said, holding the ring out between them. "It's all convenience."

"My dear Martha," he said, as if she really were everything. "Of course."

She didn't flinch, didn't show a bit of hurt. When he opened her arms she stepped into them, and let him hold her as she slipped the ring on her finger.

"My dear," he murmured into her hair, "would-be doctor."

Martha wondered why he always chuckled when he said that word.

***

On that night, like all her worst nights, she went to see the TARDIS.

Though from the outside it still looked the ordinary blue box, inside the once-beautiful ship was a ruin. The reddish cabin light had become almost bloody. A distant ringing sounded constantly. The console was a mess, paneling pulled off, pipes and tubes and wiring crammed into it. A metal cage was half-installed around the central shaft and two massive copper pipes were in the process of being laid down across the cabin floor.

Martha found some peace by tidying up what she could, wiping away smears of oil and a mysterious fluid. She never touched the mess of tubes and pipe and cabling the Master had installed, only the original elements of the TARDIS. She always spoke to it as she worked, as if she wasn't as responsible for this as the Master himself.

"I'm sorry, love," she said. "You look as bad as I feel. But it's worth it. I promise you."

When she had cleaned what she could, Martha knelt behind the bench near the console and pulled up the grating behind it. She felt in the narrow space between one of the support struts and the flooring. For a moment, her breath caught in her throat, and then her fingertips contacted the thin edge of the photograph she had hidden there.

Martha closed her eyes. She never took the photo out; she could see it clearly enough in her mind, Leo and Tish, her mum and her dad, herself, smiling. Innocent and whole, alive. But she liked to feel that it was still there.

The dry scrape of the TARDIS doors opening jerked her upright. She tried to get the panel back in place quietly and quickly, but her fingers slipped on the metal and it fell down with a clang. She held her breath and waited for the Master's voice to ring out, to cut her down.

Instead, she heard a low, male gasp. Martha glanced around herself, grabbed a laser cutter the Master had left behind. Her heart pounding in her ears, she leaned past the bench to have a look.

An old, wiry man with a long face and nervous eyes stood just inside the TARDIS, staring at her.

"You," he said. "You're Martha Jones. Saxon's--"

Her mind filled in _whore_, but he simply didn't finish.

"That's right," she said. "And who are you?"

"I was assured--" he said, his hands patting at himself, as if he were searching his pockets for something. "No matter, no matter. What are you doing here?"

"I think you should be answering that question. Or should I call security?"

"Oh, Miss Jones, I doubt you will. He wouldn't like that, if you did, would he? Does he even know you're here?"

"Who are you?" she repeated.

"Archie Muir," he said. "Torchwood."

"You're a long way from Cardiff."

"Glasgow. Torchwood Two."

"There's a Torchwood Two?"

"There's me," Archie said, eyeballing her. "So do I trust her, or don't I? Hard to say, hard to say. Which is it, puppet, lapdog, fool...?"

"I can hear you," she said.

"Do you know what he is doing here? Do you?" He stared at her face, and she stared back, showing him nothing. She was getting good at that, even as the Master was good at it. "Or have you come to get lost? Red eyes. Crying, or doing the drugs?"

"Or how about allergies?"

"Yes, could be that, too, couldn't it?" He took a few steps forward, halting between each and watching her, as if she were an unknown dog. She half expected him to extend a hand towards her so she could sniff it. From one of his many pockets, he produced a handheld of some sort and began waving it up and down, squinting at it.

"What do you think you're doing? Didn't you hear me? I said, you can't be here." She stepped in front of the scanner. "Especially not if you're Torchwood."

"The rumors. The parts. And this! Isn't it--wasn't it--? I just have to confirm--then maybe Harkness will take my calls. Thinks I'm a fool. I'm a fool? Look at Cardiff, what've they ever had to cope with? Not twenty calls a day about the Loch Ness Monster, I'm sure." Archie Muir tried to lean around her, turning a dial on the scanner. "Give me a look, then, dear."

Martha raised the laser cutter. "I can't let you do that."

Archie stopped, looked at the cutter, and then at Martha. "Young lady. You don't point dangerous equipment at folks without meaning to use it. Not wise, not wise at all."

"I mean it."

"Do you? Saw the look on your face, I did, when I first walked in here. Thought I was him, didn't you? You don't want to hurt me. Folks like me, we're here to help you."

He took a step towards the central console, towards her. She didn't lower the cutter.

"Stop," she said.

"He's not who you think he is, young lady. I'm quite sure. Quite sure. What's he paid you with, attention and jewels? Not enough. Get away from him, if you're smart. He's not human. Look into his past. Look hard."

He took another step, and she raised her thumb over the activation switch on the cutter handle.

Archie shook his head. "Well, go on then, shoot me," he said. "Others will come. Torchwood Two, UNIT, the Doctor, others. I trust that they'll sort it out. Oh yes. If Archie Muir can, others will too."

Martha's attention snagged on a single word. "The doctor? Which doctor?"

She was so distracted she almost missed Archie's brief glance at the scanner in his hand, the split-second widening of his eyes. Whatever he'd come for, he'd gotten. He gave her a grandfatherly smile, pocketed the scanner, put his hands up.

"All right, young lady. She wins, doesn't she? I'll be going, then."

Archie turned. He began walking towards the TARDIS doors, and she almost let him do it.

Almost.

Martha's mouth dried out as she realized that she couldn't let him go. Even if he had been just a janitor--the wrong word spoken to the right ears could ruin everything. And Archie Muir was Torchwood; he had recognized something, he knew Saxon was more than he said he was.

"Stop," she said. Archie kept walking.

Her hand tightened on the laser cutter.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, but it's what I have to do. I've got to make things right."

She thumbed the activation switch, and shut her eyes against the glare.


	8. Who

"There was no blood. No blood at all, you know. Just a little burned hole."

It was Christmas Eve. She sat at the dinner table, staring out the glass wall of Saxon's flat at the blinking lights across the street. A half-drunk glass of champagne sat in front of her; she played with the stem of the glass.

"What are you on about now?" The Master emerged from the kitchen, undoing his Harold Saxon costume--a tuxedo, complete with bowtie, worn to yet another pointless political hobnobbing affair. He tossed his cufflinks onto the table beside her. "Have you finally gone mad? I suppose it's about time. You've been needing a new look."

She shot him a hateful glare. He beamed at her. "Ah, there's the Martha Jones I love."

She turned her face back to the window. His hand landed on her bare shoulder, eased the curtain of her hair back. His fingertip lay against the top of her spine. If she imagined, it could seem like a loving caress, and some nights, she was still willing to do so.

"Oh, don't be like that. It's Christmas. Aren't you humans supposed to be full of good cheer?"

"What's to be cheerful about?"

"Plenty! Let's see... I'm Minister of Defense. We're getting married. The campaign is going smashingly. The machine is almost done. Everything is going according to plan?"

When she didn't react to any of these, he leaned over, rested his cheek against hers. "Only four more months until the end of this reality and you see your family again?"

"All right. Cheers to that," she said, and sipped from her champagne glass.

"Just a drink? Not even a kiss?"

He never made her do anything, only suggested. It was always her choice. She supposed he liked it, that way. She came to him. She had no one to blame but herself.

Martha stood and kissed him.

"Kiss me, kill me," she murmured against his mouth. She felt him smile.

"All in good time, my dear." His hand wrapped over her right, briefly squeezed. She felt her engagement ring dig into his fingers, and the sides of her middle and pinky. "You look tired. Come to bed."

"Eventually."

She felt his annoyance, but sat back down at the table anyway. When she heard the door closing down the hall, she let out a long breath she wasn't aware of holding. She was grateful to whatever game he was playing that insisted on her willing compliance; she didn't fool herself that he did it out of some respect for her.

Martha drank down the rest of her champagne, and waited.

***

She went to their room, later, to see if he was asleep. The Master was sleeping more than he had when they first met, sometimes as long as four hours--something he was doing was taking it out of him. When he slept lately, he slept like the dead. Martha stood over him and thought about the hole she had put in Archie Muir's chest, of how easily she could do it to the Master while he lay there with his child-like, innocent expression.

But if he died, so did all her plans. If he died, she was nothing but small and evil.

She turned and looked for his case. She found it propped against the side of the chair in the corner of the room, and, as quietly as she could, she popped open the clasps and eased the laptop out of it. She laid it down on the chair seat while she closed the case again.

Saxon's mobile rang.

Martha jumped away from the case guiltily. She glanced at Saxon but he didn't stir, not until the third ring. By then she was able to get to the door, and shut it quietly behind herself. On the fifth ring, she heard him answer, voice thick with sleep.

"Saxon. This better be good."

Martha resumed her position at the dinner table just as the bedroom door opened.

"A what? A Christmas star? Are you--?" The Master paused.

Martha followed his gaze out the window and gasped, seeing the distant, star-shaped object descending towards the Thames.

"That's no star, you idiot." The Master seized his jacket from the coat closet and opened the front door. "Mobilize the local units now. Protocol Z. I want it brought down and the wreckage retrieved--"

The door shut behind him, cutting off the rest of his order.

In the distance, the Christmas star lit up with something like lightning.

"Beautiful," Martha murmured, but she didn't stay to watch it.

She hurried back to the bedroom. The laptop was still on the chair seat. Martha opened it and booted it up, tapping her fingers on the chair arm impatiently.

There were benefits to being the Master's companion; sometimes when he was feeling arrogant and lazy, he had her go through his correspondence as if she were his secretary. He did not seem to be especially creative with his passwords. She pulled up the Torchwood Remote Access window and logged in effortlessly.

"Happy Christmas," she said to herself, and navigated to the database search.

She typed in "doctor." The portal pulled up a massive list of doctors. A quick perusal of the first few pages of results brought nothing of interest. Martha bit her lip, sitting back on her heels, and considered. Then she typed, "the doctor."

A single entry came up. She held her breath and pulled up the main record. A number of faces stared out at her, old and young, odd and handsome. Bold letters underneath declared the faces to be "Enemy of the Crown. Seize On Sight." She began to read, and then she stared at the pictures again.

"But this is for a single individual?"

Her eye caught the line item "species." Next to it was "Time Lord."

"Stupid," she muttered. "I should've guessed!"

There were dozens upon dozens of incidents and sightings, dating back to 1879 and the founding of Torchwood. Earlier dates were listed for even more possible sightings. Martha's eyes skimmed the most recent: the mannequins coming to life, the space ship crashing into Big Ben, the Battle of Canary Wharf.

She swallowed.

"Fascinating reading, isn't it?"

Martha slammed the laptop shut. Too late, she knew, but she couldn't help the automatic response. The Master dropped down beside her.

"Torchwood enemy number one arrives in town and the harmless, curious ghosts become fully fledged metal monsters?"

He reached over, opened up the laptop again. When the screen came back up, he pulled up a surveillance photo of the Doctor at the Torchwood facility, wild eyed and shouting at something, all mad eyebrows and unruly hair.

"He's a menace," the Master said, staring at the screen. "Flocking to trouble, trying to fix things, but always, always leaving a ruin in his wake. Sound familiar, Martha?"

Martha said nothing.

"You... doctors."

The Master held his hand in front of the screen, almost as if he meant to touch that manic face, and then he shut the laptop with a force that made her wince. He wore such an expression that Martha couldn't tear her eyes away, such a mixture of hate and fear and loathing and passion, and perhaps, even love.

It was an expression Martha saw on her own face, sometimes, in the mirror, when the Master passed through the room or her thoughts.

She stood abruptly, unable to be in the bedroom any more. Breathless, she hurried into the dining room, picked up her glass and stared out of the wide windows, into the dark.

The sound of blood rushing in her ears deafened her.

Martha knew then with crystal clarity that she was a piece to be discarded. All of this, all of this game; in the end it was nothing to do with her. The Master played it for the Doctor.

Despair threatened, and fear, that all she had done was futile, for nothing. That she had stood by Saxon, that she had let the TARDIS be mutilated, that she had killed, all in the name of promises that would never be kept.

He would give her the second TARDIS, he had said. What a fool she was to believe that. She didn't even know how to pilot one--he had laughed, when she asked to be shown how. And once he had the Doctor why would he take her back? Unless he wanted to watch her die at the hands of the same Cybermen who murdered her family. Perhaps he would consider that a gift. Perhaps she would, too.

But she had come all this way. She had done so much, so much of it awful, but not all. She had given up so much. She had to find a way out, a way to redeem this. If the Master thought so little of her--if she was nothing but a mouse, a pawn--surely she could find a way to exit the game on her own terms?

She felt the Master enter the room, and she despaired.

His words were like silk wrapped around a blade. "I know what you're thinking. Humans are so transparent. But haven't you learned after all this time, after all I've given you...? It's so much easier when you don't fight." She could feel his smile on the back of her neck, burning her. "Less fun, but easier."

She turned and tried to smile at him. "I don't know what you mean, Harry."

"Master."

She tried to say the word, tried to placate him, but it stuck in her mouth. His feral grin dropped into a scowl.

"Don't think that I _need_ you. That I care what happens to you. If you do something rash and you die, it will annoy me, but if won't matter. If you kill yourself, it won't matter. If you cooperate and you live--who knows, my dear, maybe you'll get the better of me after all?" She saw the flash of his teeth. "So what do you say?"

She said nothing. The Master's arm wrapped heavily around her shoulders, and Martha knew she was lost.


	9. Fate

"You understand the plan?"

Martha sat in front of the picture window. "Yes," she said, dully. Four months, four months she had searched for any opportunity, any way out, but still this day had come.

She had looked for her chance to ruin the Master's plans. But she must have been as opaque as glass to him. The Master had moved the TARDIS to some secret location, and she no longer had its comfort. The weight of the wedding ring on her hand was like a ten-ton stone. Her family was still dead, ten months rotting in the dirt. And the Master still slept at their flat every night, so peacefully, as if mocking her, inviting her to kill him in his sleep.

She had tried, more than once, but she never could bring herself to do it. And that made her glad.

The Master snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Are you in there? I said repeat it to me. Humor me."

"I go to work. I'll meet the Doctor on my rounds with Stoker. We'll get carted off to the moon by Judoon, and I'll help him sort it out."

"And?"

"And I'm to make friends with him."

"Yes. That's very important, do you understand? He'll trust you almost from the start, I don't know why," the Master said. "I suppose he'll see all the good and the kindness and your shared penchant for hopeless situations." He rolled his eyes. "He'll trust you, Martha, to the point where he leaves his life in your hands."

"And then I let him die?"

"No," the Master had said. "And then you save his life and hand him to me. I want him to see you do it. Betray him. That's when the fun begins, when he finally gets to see my smiling face. He'll love that. And you, my dear, will be free to do as you like."

Martha didn't bother to hide that she didn't believe him. "Of course I will."

He knelt in front of her and cupped her cheeks with his hands. "Oh, Martha, Martha Saxon, don't you trust me?"

"Don't call me that," she said, turning her face away so that his kiss landed somewhere on her jaw.

He snorted, and his eyes hooded. Then he stood, turning to look out the window, hands on his hips. Two of his fingers began to tap out a familiar four-beat against his pelvis. She had agitated him; she was glad.

"Don't even think about not going through with it," he warned her, still facing away from her. "If you try to betray me, I'll know. It's been all fun and games, my dear, watching you run your little rat maze, exercising your free will, but when the moment comes you _will_ do what I want, whether you choose to or not."

Martha bowed her head. "Of course," she said, quietly, "Master."

***

The Royal Hope.

Martha chuckled darkly at the name.

She stood across the way from the hospital. The pedestrian crossing light had long since changed from red to green. The people around her flowed forward, but Martha didn't move.

She would go into the hospital. She would meet the Doctor on her rounds. She would befriend him, and then betray him to the Master on the moon.

But Martha could not make her feet move. She heard someone behind her curse at her, felt people shove into her sides. If she stayed there, if she didn't get to the hospital before it began raining, if she watched it fly away and did nothing, would she finally win? No, but the Master had warned her against that. If she didn't go inside, he would make her. Her choices were always an illusion. Her fate was written in stone, so unchangeably that she could meet her future wrongdoings in the shape of a dozen floating, insane spheres.

Martha waited to hear the part of herself that had always screamed against such things as fixed timelines and pre-destiny, but she heard only silence.

The crowd moved around her; the world moved on without her. Her feet refused to lift from the pavement. She waited for him to take control of her, to move her limbs like she was a puppet. She waited to die.

Someone shuffled past her, caught her shoulder. Martha looked up. Her eyes widened; she knew that face.

It was the face she saw every day in the mirror, after all.

"Hope, Martha," her other self said, and smiled brilliantly, pressing something into her hand.

 

Martha looked down to see the photo of her family, the one she had hidden in the TARDIS: Leo and Tish, her mum, her dad, herself, laughing and innocent. She gasped and looked up, her lips parting to say something, to ask anything, but the other Martha was gone.

"Hope," she repeated, and pressed the photo to her chest.

Martha walked forward, head held high, to meet her destiny.

-fin-


End file.
